


Heretic

by AreYouReady



Category: Death Note, Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Execution by Burning at the Stake, Light's God Complex, M/M, Planetary Cults, Religious Themes, Resurrection, Sexual Content, Solitary Confinement, space travel, time dilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreYouReady/pseuds/AreYouReady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His trial was brutal and swift. He was given no defense. </p><p>Of course, he had expected this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heretic

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by PhoenixEgg.

L arrived planetside at dusk, when the great red dwarf of a star that this world orbited was nearly blotted out by a mountain range on the western horizon. Not that he could see it very well through the heavily tinted spaceport windows. He had brought very little with him; he did not expect his stay here to be comfortable. Most of his possessions had stayed light-years away, on the last planet he’d visited. He’d traveled to this place with only a duffel bag and a rucksack.

The moment he gave his ID to the peacekeeper inspecting all the newcomers, there was a susurrus. The false name he’d given himself three years ago to him and four hundred and fifty to those not so well versed in near light-speed travel was known here. He had expected that, and what came next. Keepers of the Faith in long black cloaks and face concealing masks erupted from a door in the side of the spaceport, grabbing him roughly by the arms.

“Mr. Ryuuzaki,” said the one directly in front of him in a masked and mechanized voice, “You are under arrest for heresy against the Church of the Shining Moon.”

L bowed his head, going limp, and allowed them to drag him away.

-

_“Do you know why I chose this place, Lawliet?” Light asked, lounging catlike and naked on their luxurious bed._

_“Indulge me,” L replied, too absorbed in the delicious view to care much for analyzing Light’s reasoning, even if this wasn’t usually the sort of planet they visited on their galaxy spanning travels._

_“Because it’s isolated and backward, both technologically and ideologically.” Light grinned. It was an expression that was full of smug self-satisfaction, and only strengthened the catlike impression._

_“And we want this… why?” L asked, quirking an eyebrow._

_“_ I _want it. I have an experiment in mind.”_

-

His trial was brutal and swift. He was given no defense. L supposed it was understandable. He had spent the past four hundred years proselytizing against, and just plain _attacking,_ the Church of the Shining Moon under the guise of being an anthropologist who analyzed the small, single-planet religions which had sprung up over the past few thousand years. The judge, clad in white robes, had sentenced him to 100 days of solitude, followed by execution. Execution by burning. L had expected that, too, though the idea still made him cringe slightly and touch his face, imagining what it would feel like for the skin to char away and the fat under it to melt and drip down until it fed the flames below.

The jeers of the crowd seething around the huge circular platform on which he stood, alone, deafened him. He hadn’t seen so many people united so completely in a cause together since… well, since Light. Only this time, instead of mindless, screaming devotion, it was mindless, screaming hatred that moved hundreds of people to scrabble at the sides of stage, trying and failing to climb, to put themselves on the same level as the object of their obsession. L almost laughed as the Keepers of the Faith came to take him away again.

-

_“You know I could make them love me,” Light purred, his hot breath ghosting over L’s ear. L knew it to be true. Light’s gift for seduction of the mind was greater even than his gift for seduction of the body._

_“I could have a thousand men, women, and children genuflecting before me. It wouldn’t even take any effort.” Light continued, in rapturous tones that stirred a shred of jealousy in L’s gut. But he understood._

_“It still wouldn’t be enough.” L sighed as Light planted a kiss on his neck._

_“No, darling, it wouldn’t,” Light smiled, “I won’t be satisfied until I am a God.”_

-

The Rooms of Solitude were white, windowless, and held no clocks. L imagined he could go mad during his confinement. He might’ve been able to, had he not known his purpose with such complete conviction. He checked and double checked his calculations for when _it_ would happen on the walls, until the plastic was ragged with fingernail scratchings and his fingernails were more ragged still. He tossed the orange that came with his first meal in the air like a ball until, after being dropped one too many times, it exploded on the floor in a mess of pulp. He did the same with the next orange, and the next, until the meals started coming with strawberries instead.

He broke one of his fingers punching a wall. He wasn’t normally one for needlessly aggressive, self-destructive behavior, but he knew pain would help keep him sane. Besides, he wanted to know what sort of medical attention he would receive here. The next time he woke up, he found the finger splinted, and the walls and floor coated in a layer of thin, cushioning white rubber.

By the time the hundred days were over, and the Keepers of the Faith appeared to take him to his execution, he had trouble remembering what human voices other than his own sounded like. He’d talked to himself, sang to himself, _screamed_ to himself within those bright white walls, but it had been no replacement for the ambient murmur that he was used to hearing around him, the sound of human life being lived. The first time he heard that sound again, he wept, not caring if others saw. He would go to his execution gladly if he could just spend another moment with those voices.

-

 _“Every good religion needs a martyr,” Light panted, sinking down on L’s cock. “A prophet, a martyr, a hero. Or all in one,” Light smirked down at him. L knew he looked a mess, but Light had been teasing him for hours. Though even now, with L buried inside of him, desecrating him to the core,_ Light _looked like a golden idol, and waxed poetic about the possibility of his own greatness._

_“Do you plan to die for your cause?” L questioned, breathlessly._

_“Oh Lawliet,” Light leaned down and pressed a kiss to L’s chest, “You underestimate me.”_

-

L’s first sight of his intended pyre made him gasp in spite of himself. At the center of the greatest Temple of the Shining Moon stood a stake, surrounded by a pile of wood. But what took L’s breath away was what hung from the impossibly high ceiling: golden replicas of this planet’s four moons, each greater in diameter than the combined heights of seven men. He had known they were there, and he knew what hid inside them, but he had never seen them, and they were beautiful, and grandiose, and so like Light he almost choked.

He was docile while they led him through the crowd to his intended place of execution, head bowed, taking small, stumbling steps. His long, black hair, uncut since he had arrived, shielded the crowd from his enquiring gaze. His hands were bound not with cuffs, but with rough rope, and in front of him, not behind. Tradition was paramount in these situations.

One Keeper of the Faith, who wore a red mask rather than the usual black, took charge of L once they reached the wood pile. They pulled L’s arms above his head, and lashed him to the stake so tightly that L thought he could feel the blood to his feet being cut off. He closed his eyes in anticipation of what would come next.

-

_“I have a plan,” Light murmured as they lay together, limbs entangled and torsos sticky with drying fluids._

_“Don’t you always, my beautiful creature?” L asked, nestling the back of his head more comfortably into the pillow._

_“Oh yes. But this time, it’s more of a method. I know how to perform a feat that is impossible.” Light snaked his arm over L’s chest._

_“And what feat is that?” L smiled indulgently down at Light. Light blinked back up at him with terrifying clarity._

_“Resurrection.”_

-

L opened his eyes again as a shaft of golden light struck the center of the temple floor about twenty feet in front of him. The crowd parted, gasping and skittering out of the way of the searing beam, so shocked that they did not notice the mechanized whirring that accompanied it, and the slight movement of the moons. And they _certainly_ were in no position to notice such trivialities when a _figure_ appeared inside the light.

A man stood there, naked and beautiful, his eyes closed, his expression beatific. He was wreathed in a halo of golden light, and his skin shone like an angel’s. There was complete silence. Then row by row of worshippers dropped to the ground in deep prayer as they recognized the man whose fiery charisma and absolute martyrdom had founded their faith. Even the red masked Keeper who had been about to light L’s funeral pyre dropped to genuflect before the returned prophet. L was the only one who was still watching the man when he opened his eyes. And the man watched L right back.

He approached the stake slowly, with all the measured grace that L remembered. When they were only a few inches apart, he brought up his hand to stroke L’s cheek, and the motion was so tender that L almost couldn’t look at him any longer.

“It’s been a long thousand years, Lawliet,” said Light, “I knew you wouldn’t miss my second coming. Though I must admit, I never expected you to attend in such a capacity.”

“I was simply doing my duty by you, Light-kun,” L smiled crookedly.

“And how is that, my lovely transgressor?”

“Every good God needs a devil.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love the idea of L playing the Demosthenes to Light's Locke. I just can't get it out of my head, so I wrote this


End file.
